


Needing Help

by Emjen_Enla



Series: Prompted Works [36]
Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: (Ribs), Book 2: Crooked Kingdom, Broken Bones, Colm Fahey Just Wants to Help, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Dubious Self-Care, Gen, I'm single-handedly building this AO3 tag, Kaz Brekker's Distrust of Authority Figures, Refusing Help
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emjen_Enla/pseuds/Emjen_Enla
Summary: Colm Fahey attempts to "dad" Kaz. It goes about as badly as you'd expect.
Relationships: Colm Fahey & Kaz Brekker
Series: Prompted Works [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1366669
Comments: 7
Kudos: 143





	Needing Help

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreamishMind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamishMind/gifts).



> This was written for a prompt on tumblr. The request was "'I wish you would write a fic where...' Either 'Kaz plays an instrument. ' or 'Colm attempts to Dad the crows with mixed results.'" It ended up being just Kaz and Colm. **shrugs**

Colm Fahey had thought he’d known what he was getting into when he started abetting the gangsters his son had fallen in with. It had seemed straightforward enough on paper; pretend to be the fictional Johannus Rietveld and convince a couple merchants to invest in nonexistent shares. So far, that had been exactly what he’d been doing, but it was far from simple. Pretending to be a person who didn’t exist involved a lot more rote memorization than he’d expected. He had a whole cover story to memorize, which should have kept him too busy to worry about anything else, but it didn’t.

Jesper and Nina had been helping him work on his cover when Kaz had returned. He’d left the night before to carry out another part of the plan involving one of Ketterdam’s many gangs and everyone had been fidgety and nervous waiting for him to come back. When he finally had, he’d been battered and bruised but apparently victorious, though Colm was still a bit hazy on how taking over a gang helped the plan. What he did know for sure, was that Jesper and the others had been bitterly rebuked from their attempts to help Kaz patch himself up.

A couple hours later, they took a break from cramming and ordered food from room service. Colm went to fill mugs with water from the sink—it seemed bizarre that this suite was so lavish but still only had sinks in the bathrooms—and as he was heading back he heard a grunt, what sounded like a stumble and then a crash. It said a lot about the circumstances he’d found himself in that his first thought was that someone had snuck into the suite to attack them. He set the mugs on the bathroom sink and moved towards the source of the noise as quietly as he could.

As he rounded the corner he was somewhat relieved to learn there was no intruder, though what he did find was still worrying.

Kaz Brekker was sitting on the floor beneath one of the Ketterdam Suite’s sprawling windows, crow’s head cane abandoned next to him. He was bracing himself up with one hand and clutching his side with the other. He must have fallen.

“Are you alright?” Colm hurried over, looking for the source of the problem. “What happened? Did you—”

Kaz lifted his head and leveled a frightening glare at him that made him pull up short. “I’m fine,” he said, which might have been a bit more believable if he wasn’t crumpled on the floor and audibly wheezing.

“Do you have broken ribs?” Colm asked, squatting down and reaching out. “What can I do to help?”

“You can leave me alone,” Kaz said. The force of his glare was so intense that it kept Colm from touching him. It was the sort of look that said you’d be incinerated if you got too close.

In the weeks since he’d gotten mixed up in all this, Colm had studied the way the various kids looked at him and interacted with him. Jesper always looked like he’d never anticipated Colm meeting any of these people or being exposed to this kind of life and didn’t know how to deal with the fact that he was. Nina sometimes got a sad, wistful look on her face like Colm represented something unattainable but nice to think about.

Kaz Brekker generally looked at Colm like he was a playing piece, but when he thought no one was looking his expression always morphed into something wary, like he was just waiting for Colm to prove himself untrustworthy and dangerous. It made Colm wonder what exactly had happened to make someone that young that wary. Given what he’d seen of Ketterdam, he imagined it had to be horrific.

“Let me help you,” he said. “You sound like you’re having a hard time breathing. You probably broke a rib.”

“I can tell when I have broken ribs, thank you very much,” Kaz growled. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on your cover story?”

“We took a break for dinner,” Colm said. “There’s plenty of food. I can help you to the sitting room so you can have something to eat. After that you should probably rest for a while—”

Kaz heaved a sigh, which was obviously a bad idea because he went rigid in pain afterwards, what little color had remained in his face draining quickly. “What part of ‘leave me alone’ do you not understand?” he forced out through clenched teeth.

“What do you expect me to do? Just leave you crumbled on the floor?” Colm asked, and if the glare was anything to go on, that was exactly what Kaz wanted. “I can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because you’re seventeen for one!” Colm burst out. “I’m a father; how am I supposed to just walk away and leave a kid my son’s age in pain?”

Kaz blinked. It was obvious that whatever he’d expected the response to be, it was not that. “You know that I am perfectly capable of killing you,” he said quietly.

Perhaps that would have been intimidating under other circumstances. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re seventeen,” Colm said. “And I’m going to call your bluff; you’re Jesper’s friend. You’re not going to kill his father.”

The disgruntled look Kaz gave him reminded Colm a little bit of a cat. For the first time the kid actually looked his age. It made the reality of his injuries even more horrifying. From what Colm understood from listening to Jesper and Nina, Kaz had taken over the gang they were part of by fighting off the older members of the gang who had still been loyal to their former leader. They hadn’t specified exactly how old those people had been, but the idea of a bunch of adults beating up a teenager was awful.

Unsurprisingly, Kaz didn’t make good on his threat to murder him. Instead the kid unfolded himself carefully and reached for his cane and the windowsill. He used both to lever himself back to his feet, glaring at Colm the whole time as a clear warning to keep his distance. The maneuver looked so difficult that Colm would have called a doctor if they hadn’t all been wanted criminals, as it was he still considered it.

When Kaz finally made it back to his feet, he looked down his nose at Colm, obviously trying not to pant. “Just for the record,” he said after a moment. “Unless I expressly ask for it, I never need help, and I _definitely_ never need help based on my age.” Then he began to make his slow and painful way down the hall, leaving Colm behind.


End file.
